The Impact of Managers’ Participation in Costing System Design on Their Perceived Contributions to Process Improvement

The aim of this paper is to investigate the impact of managers’ participation in costing system design on their perceived contributions to process improvement. Drawing on the literature on business process management, participative decision-making and self-determination theory, we propose that participation in costing system design fosters managers’ perceived contributions to process improvement through their autonomous motivation for cost management and their perceived usefulness of cost information. Questionnaire data obtained from 170 Belgian managers were used to test the proposed model. The results suggest that participation in costing system design increases managers’ autonomous motivation for cost management and enhances their perceived usefulness of cost information. Managers’ perceived usefulness of cost information is, in turn, positively associated with their perceived contributions to process improvement. The effect of managers’ autonomous motivation for cost management on their perceived contributions to process improvement is, however, not significant. Taken together, our findings imply that contributions to process improvement mainly emerge through informational mechanisms rather than motivational mechanisms triggered by the participation process.